Bounty

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Bounty Page 21

by Harper Alexander


  He was noticed by someone then, but there was so much commotion that it wasn’t hard to lose himself in it and dart away, evading those who jumped for him.

  Just shy of the alleys across the way, though, an impact jolted him senseless and sent him flying to the ground with a guard tangled up in his tumble. Thrashing to come out on top, Godren tangled with the other man and beat him back, and they were both engaged in fierce, wild combat until Godren’s desperation prevailed and the guard went down with the coat of his uniform ending up in Godren’s mindless hands, having been stripped in the fray. Godren regarded it a moment before closing his fingers around it in possessive conclusion and sprinting off to continue his quest. The uniform might come in handy later on.

  Stealing another horse from the neighborhood, he swung on without a moment to lose and urged his new mount into a gallop across the cobblestones. Tearing through the city, they made for the Crowing Woods and the dire purpose that awaited them there.

  Once they had left the streets behind, Godren leaned low over the horse’s neck and urged him to churn into a breakneck speed, and with a noticeable stretching of his legs, the animal responded and pumped his effort into his pace. They hurtled toward the dark gathering of trees – a daunting, solid, jagged silhouette clumped in the distance.

  When he saw the camp, he slowed down. It wouldn’t do to charge in and draw attention to himself. Donning the coat he’d come to possess, Godren avoided the direct glare of the torches as he approached.

  They were stationed just outside of the forest, restlessly biding their time. Scouting out the king, Godren approached his company but hung back, straining his ears to catch the status of the situation. A bloodied scout was reporting:

  “They took her to the Crone’s Cottage. Put her inside, but now…they’re just sitting outside – guarding, but they look so inoperative. They appear strangely…relaxed. Almost bored.”

  “Waiting for orders from a superior,” someone else deduced.

  “They’ve had her much longer than necessary,” the king broke in, composed but restless. “This idleness is out of place.”

  Coming right into a situation deemed ‘amiss’, Godren wanted to just respond to the restless ill-boding that he instantly felt and take off into the forest to halt things before something went wrong. But he managed to suppress the urge and bide his own time, wanting to hear more – or at least wanting to come to his own conclusion first. Keeping his head ducked and angled away, he lingered within earshot, holding himself back.

  “What kind of weapons do you detect?” the king wanted to know. “What would we come up against if we raided the forest?”

  “Well, I thought the issue was the fact that they hold sway over your daughter’s fate, your Majesty. Isn’t that threat weapon enough?”

  “I’m getting restless,” the king said. “I don’t think they know what they want. Which means they could instantly decide to kill her – which we ruled out, at first, only because we took their not killing her to mean they surely wanted something else.”

  “Well,” replied the scout, “in the way of weapons, they look fairly…thoroughly…equipped.”

  “What does that mean?” the king asked without patience.

  “They each carry at least three knives on their persons, one has a sword, and the other a lash. It looks like they have a stash of throwing stars as well. And something I do not recognize. And aside from that, it is no myth that the proximity around the cottage is amply sabotaged,” he said with a brave swallow.

  “The reason for all your scratches?” the king asked.

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  ‘Scratches’ was an understatement. The scout was covered in slashes that shone in the torchlight. Godren wondered just what kind of traps he had sprung.

  “Don’t know if ghosts could be kept out that way, but I must give the witch credit for trying,” the scout commented.

  “Don’t believe every story you hear, Levine. About ghosts or Matilda’s being a witch. Stories like that can grow into as deterring a sabotage as any.”

  “Right, sire.”

  The ‘Crone’s Cottage’ was a title courtesy of the stories people had told about Matilda the hermit, a woman of generations past who had gone to the extreme of moving into the ‘haunted forest’ to be alone. The scenario made for all kinds of good stories, and the stories had brewed and risen and been endlessly twisted by superstition until they began to cause superstition of their own.

  “If we took enough men to ensure we could best them, they’d see us coming, and I doubt they’d let us get away with it,” the scout said. “They’d bring out Her Highness and use her to force us back. They’re not interested in negotiating right now.”

  If they weren’t interested in negotiating…things could go downhill fast.

  “If we take enough men...they’ll see us coming…” the scout had said. But all you need is one man ready to take on them both, Godren thought, and he angled his mount away from the circle of men. Keeping his pace to an inconspicuous walk, he moved tensely along the edge of camp, flanked on one side by revealing torchlight and on the other by the foreboding shadows of the trees. Each angle was threatening in the opposite extreme.

  Away from the meeting, Godren dismounted the steaming animal he’d ridden in, fondly ruffling its mane in parting. Forsaking the light of the camp, he squared his shoulders toward his mission and stepped into the fringes of the woods. Tree shadows swamped him, darkness melting his edges to blend with the shrouded scenery. He blinked against the onslaught of patched shadow, trying to balance everything out. When his eyes adjusted, the dominant blackness gave way to evident layers of dappled moonlight and billows of blue mist throughout the trees.

  Ducking under low-hanging branches, Godren wove his swift way toward the infamous Crone’s Cottage, his safety an irrelevant concern as he anticipated being thwarted by any means of unexpected sabotage. He knew without a doubt they would come, knew he would spring something at any given moment, and that knowledge was not deterring in the least. He was ready: keenly poised, for security, but most of all just as ruled by the fearlessness he’d cultivated since awakening numb to the world. What was more, he had a greater cause underfoot here than anything he would achieve working for Mastodon. So be it if it killed him. Maybe it would compensate some of the wrongs he’d done in his own favor.

  Out of the mystic darkness, a rig of disembodied tree limbs suddenly swung down to topple Godren to the ground. He caught only a glimpse of massive movement out of the corner of his eye, and a warning creak to go along with it, before he was diving out of the ram’s brutal path. The sweeping branches still clipped his legs, knocking him into a bruising spin, and he came to a rest only as his whirling body struck a tree. Senselessness didn’t even have time to register; impact with the trunk brought a wicked cage-like contraption stabbing down at him from the branches above. Heaving himself into a roll out of harm’s way, Godren disregarded the minor detail of regaining his breath and threw his senses into predicting the darkness’s moves.

  A metallic clamping sound of released tension went off next to his body before he could climb to his feet, and a quick inventory of the source found the jaws of a small game trap fastened securely on his forearm. He must have rolled right into it, he thought, aghast at the wicked sight of the clamp and its punctures when he didn’t feel a thing. It was disturbing and morbidly inspiring at the same time.

  He didn’t have time to think about it, though – let alone remove it. In an instantaneous decision of absolute dismissal, he tore his eyes away and sprang once again to his feet, metal jaws still attached to his arm. The surprises that the darkness kept had gone momentarily quiet – but tauntingly so.

  Godren only had to move to call them back down on him. A tripped wire twanged underfoot, and then gears churned and cranked amid the trees, and with a sturdy snap an arrow sang by his head. Following that, a series of kin releases saw him careening for cover, as lethally puncturing weapons thudde
d into the tree trunks around him. Like a flying viper, one bit across his neck and ripped on past. Godren felt no pain, but was just aware of its grazing kiss as it tweaked his neck to the side. He didn’t check the blood though; aside from being caught up in the greater heat of the moment, he would rather he remained blissfully ignorant. There was no sense shattering the illusion of invincibility that he had effectively supporting his nerve.

  The next phase of the traps consisted of nets. They were progressively strung everywhere – between trunks, up in the branches – some of them dropping or swinging down to snare their prey while others just stood in his path, creating a maze of obstructions. Like disguised spiders’ webs, some lurked in concealing patches of shadow, too, ready to catch him from his own carelessly directed path. Godren avoided them until hazardous ground limited him to certain paths, lest he tread on beds of buried spearheads or break his ankles in the roughly-concealed pits that riddled the proximity. Then, he employed his knives and cut his way through, drawing very close now to his fiercely-guarded destination. Quieting his footfalls and tempering the other aspects of his passage, he climbed mutely through the severed tatters of a net frame and lightly blew aside a patch of mist that hung before him. It ran from his breath, dissipating to bare a window through the trees, and he resealed his lips as a commitment to silence as he crept near his vague visual of the cottage. It sat in eerie, lifeless solitude in a pocket of nestled emptiness up ahead, quaint and ominous at once.

  In the rapt silence, a flurry of cawing ravens, or crows, dashed through the branches above, low enough to scare Godren into a duck as feathers and tree pieces rained down on his head. Then they were past, though – but Godren watched them land on the cottage chimney and roof, settling in like characteristic sentries of the ‘haunted’ place.

  Godren cast his eyes about for the silhouettes of the human sentries the scout had reported, but only caught a snatch of uncertain movement from his distance. Ducking stealthily under the tresses hanging from the tree branches without taking his eyes off the cottage, he slunk ever closer.

  More ravens went by, circling the area. Their brothers called to them from the roof, the sharp sound ominously swallowed by the surrounding drifts of mist. Discouraged, the birds ruffled their feathers in an offended fashion and grudgingly, haughtily submitted to the silence – as if they’d had every intention of having their voices rudely snuffed from the beginning.

  Moonlight illuminated the pocketed clearing, giving the place an ethereal quality. The effect failed to make it any less of an ominous site to approach, but it did make it easier for Godren to survey the area while remaining safely cloaked on his end. He paused when he was close enough to pinpoint the figures guarding the yard, appraising them. They were indeed amply armed, but he disregarded that minor detail as soon as he’d completed taking inventory of their weapons, and recklessly just made toward the side where he planned to break in through the window whether they spotted him or not. He told himself it was a precaution, because its purpose was to avoid the more heavily-guarded front and back. He admitted to himself that it was reckless, too, but easily justified that by not caring. All that mattered was that he reached the princess, and as soon as possible. Then he would shield her any way he had to in order to spirit her out, even if they wailed on him the whole time. So long as Catris was behind him, he could handle facing anything. Pain was not an issue, and the indifferent confidence that came from that would at least prove to be a stumbling block to his opponents, if not a brutal inspiration to the extent he would go to best them on top of fighting defensively.

  Brute force was his plan.

  Just march up, burst in, take her, and plow your way back out, he told himself. You won’t feel a thing, and the sooner she’s out of there, the better.

  Just shy of stepping free of the trees, though, he cut his purposeful march short. For one of the abductors prowling the yard drew one of the reported ‘mystery weapons’ into sight, and, recognizing the exclusive dart gun that belonged to Mastodon’s circle, Godren watched the scenario before him erupt into complications.

  26: Complications

  Warring thoughts assaulted him as he was forced into hesitation.

  Mastodon’s men had the princess of Raven City. His allies… He was about to attack his allies. Why now? Why did they want her now? Did Ossen attacking him over her have anything to do with it? Had it made her too much of a complication? Was it unconnected, something purely ambitious? Should he cover his face now, or was he already in too deep for that to matter? Would they still recognize him? Would they care? Did they expect him? Or Ossen? If they’d hurt her… How could he go back after this? Bastin had said ‘rumor has it she’s being held in the Crowing Woods’… Did he not know? Were some of them being kept in the dark? What did Ossen think? Would he have reason enough to come to Catris’s rescue? Gods, Mastodon’s men had the princess of Raven City…

  Then he cut his thoughts loose and tied them off. Up until then he hadn’t cared who Cat’s abductors were. Now was no time to start. He hadn’t cared what happened to him, either, so there was no sense hesitating because the situation suddenly risked Mastodon’s wrath, or other complications involving her operation. Especially if the princess’s abduction had anything to do with eliminating her as a complication between Mastodon’s employees, Godren was grossly responsible and unable to let matters continue on the path they had taken.

  If his twisted position in the affair was meant to escape its reckoning, then let the darkness hide his features. If not, he would merely have a lot to answer to. With that decision, he faltered no longer.

  It was Rand and one of his own contracted men who guarded the cottage. At least they wouldn’t be as quick to recognize him, Godren thought as he continued moving toward the side of the cozy dwelling. They were thankfully not as familiar with his face. He broke from the trees with that piece of encouragement to drive him, surging into a swift rush across the yard.

  He made it to the window before the hostile guardians of the royal scandal snapped gazes on his presence and launched themselves at his advance. By the time he’d bashed the fragile window in with an elbow, they were upon him. The obstructive corner of the cottage that Godren strove to put between them with his initial outburst successfully forced a problematic angle to discourage fire from the dart guns, and by the time they rounded the wall they didn’t want to take the time to stop and aim. At that point they just charged in to confront him.

  Ripping fistfuls of shattered glass out of the jagged frame, Godren spun and slashed the obtained shards at his assailants. A flurry of blows and slices played out all in the moment they met, and then Godren forsook protecting his body to latch onto the top of the window frame behind him, hauling himself off the ground and planting his boots solidly into each assailant’s chest as he pulled himself through the window.

  He didn’t look at his hands as he dropped himself inside the musty cottage, knowing how bloody they would be and not wanting to acknowledge it. Rounding the instant his feet touched down on the floor, he cast his eyes about for the princess. Shards of glass crunched under his boots, masking other noise at first, but then he stepped free of it and caught a soft chafing sound from the corner shadows. A silhouette was tied up there.

  Good. Now he knew right where she was, and motion was a good sign. With that knowledge, he was free to take care of her abductors. Just as one was hauling himself through the window to come after him, Godren embraced the element of surprise and dove back out, right into him, toppling him to the ground. The other one pounced while Godren’s back was vulnerable amid his landing, but Godren wrenched around before the man could land and clouted him across the skull with the weight of the heavy clamp that was attached to his arm. Being numb, he threw a lot more force into the blow than what he would have if the pain had been able to register and discourage him, and was rewarded as his victim stumbled back in a stricken daze. A bleeding gash shone in the moonlight down the side of his face.

 
Tousling on the ground, Godren and his immediate assailant fought for a dominant stance. With no regard to pain whatsoever, Godren threw blows with his fists, elbows, head, and the harsh trap that clung to him with such severe companionship. It carried with it the element of surprise, a solid, callous part of him that his opponents did not expect. When they expected nothing more than a muscled forearm in the face, they received the ruthless, jagged edges of an unseen contraption instead.

  Then, recovered, the second abductor was rejoining the skirmish. Godren jumped to his feet before he could end up pinned by two forces, only to allow them to access weapons now that he had disengaged himself from the fray. They came at him with knives, which he blocked with his bare hands and arms because of the superior accuracy of wielding his own limbs in comparison to that of a blade he had merely trained with. Normally one did not have the luxury of using one’s own limbs as weapons, unable to disregard the pain it called to them so completely, but he was rather a different case and found it fascinatingly more effortless to fight with something he had mastered even since before he could walk.

  In the filtered moonlight, he saw brief glints of something enter their eyes as he went at them with such galling method, and he took advantage of their clutching perception by doubling his painless efforts. They didn’t hesitate, exactly – they were ruthless, brutal men themselves, trained to fight with the dedication of fearlessness regardless of circumstances – but they wondered. They questioned.

 

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